


Let the sunlight in

by Analinea



Series: Be still, my whumper's heart [5]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Broken Hearts, Day 9, Emotional Whump, Fake Character Death, Grief, Happy Ending, M/M, Survivor Guilt, Take me instead, Tony Whump, Whumptober 2020, themes were
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26911312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Analinea/pseuds/Analinea
Summary: Tony is facing the carefully arranged landscape, hands in his pockets, and wonders when he gave in and abandoned the top floors. The highest buildings. The cliff sides. The sky.There’s probably a metaphor to use there, something about being grounded and both feet on the ground, settled.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: Be still, my whumper's heart [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947337
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Let the sunlight in

**Author's Note:**

> Is Stony still in with the kids? I haven't read fics in ages T.T be gentle though, it's my first fic for this ship and these characters!
> 
> Title comes from one song from A Star is Born, thanks to my best friend who immediately came through when I asked for a "super tragic love song like omg my man died" *shrugs*

The wind is picking up outside, trees bending without a noise through the thick bay separating the room from the park. It’s fall, which means the leaves are golden against a sky that is more grey than blue. It’s cold, but there’s no way to feel that from the safety of the heated bedroom.

Tony is facing the carefully arranged landscape, hands in his pockets, and wonders when he gave in and abandoned the top floors. The highest buildings. The cliff sides. The sky.

There’s probably a metaphor to use there, something about being grounded and both feet on the ground, settled. 

He’s gone all the way to putting on a business suit today. It’s the first time he’s gone that far. He won’t take a step out of his room, though. Because it’s  _ his _ now. No one else’s.

Yellow flecks dance down, ripped and pushed away by the unforgiving wind. Some stubbornly hang on on the branches, even though they’re already dead. 

The clouds move so fast. It must be...it must be  _ thrilling _ to go up there. Tony’s not feeling like it today. Neither was he yesterday, and the day before that. It’s not been long since he got out of medical, so everyone says it’s normal. Their eyes say different. They do know Tony.

What is normal and has always been, is marching down the steps that lead directly to the basement workshop. Wasting away in there despite the begging of everyone. Forgetting to feed and to sleep is only a side effect of forgetting everything else; forgetting the night that lurks just beneath the surface of his skin, creating ripples he can’t scratch off. And the flashbacks.

Away from the dark and the humid air of late November, it’s easier to avoid remembering.

Tony has never been able to stay still, but one wrong move–

And his back is hitting the damp wall. And he hears Steve screaming.

“No, Tony!” 

Steve’s cry registered before the feeling of a blade pressed too close to his jugular and of a body pressing close to his back. The hold is strong, he’s not sure he could have broken off even with all his training, even if there hadn’t been something sharp ready to let blood out and air in.

“Okay.” Steve’s eyes are so wide they look yellow in the street lights. He shows his hands and bends his knees, turning just enough that he doesn’t seem as big and threatening. When you see Captain America in pictures, he looks massive, but his density in real life is one you can feel like gravity. 

Tony sure as hell has felt that pull from the very first time.

“You heroes ruined my life,” the guy holding Tony says, voice raspy and confident as he takes the lead. Tony isn’t in a position to talk back, but he’s very annoyed that he’s been caught by someone so basic. 

He reminds himself, sometimes, to be more kind. Maybe this guy really had a hard time, maybe he’s even justified in this. It’s still no excuse. And right now, he doesn’t have the patience for this.

“If you want a hero,” Steve says, and Tony narrows his eyes at him because  _ no _ . But Tony can’t talk without feeling like the knife will pierce his skin, and Steve continues though he has to know. Down in his bones, he has to know what this is doing to Tony, because he felt it too before. “Then you can as well take me.”

It’s a promise they never asked each other to make; they both know they’ll never keep it. They’ll always offer themselves up, for anyone but for each other even more. 

“It’s him I want,” the guy answers, taking a step back that arches Tony back dangerously before he can follow. 

“If that was true, you would have already killed him, right?” Steve gambles, so steady. So fucking steady but Tony has learned all the beats of his heart and sees through the pretense. “If you want one of us...you can take me instead of him.”

Tony feels the guy tilting his head in consideration. Then he says, “I think I want you both,” and in the same second pulls out a weapon from his belt with his free hand, shoots at Steve without a sound, and twists Tony to push him against the wall behind. 

Tony’s scream is cut off by the impact as he slides down; it all happened so fast and in a blink, Steve is on the ground, red slowly dripping from his forehead. He’s dead. It hits Tony with such force he can’t process the reality of it.

It’s a relief, when he’s kicked in the head so hard it slams on the wall. Then, he can fall into darkness, and he can live in a space where he never has to realize Steve will never touch him again. 

Except he wakes up. They tell him that when they received the signal that something was wrong, when they finally got there–

There was blood. And Tony, unconscious. But no Steve. Tony now has to live in a world that won’t let him grieve because he’s always had a sensible mind. If nothing can ever prove it, then it doesn’t happen. There is no body, no footage: Steve isn’t dead. 

But he is.

And it’s all Tony’s fault. And he can’t even cry.

He looks at the leaves outside. Steve used to talk about romanticism, about melancholia and creation; he said it’s so unfair to find death and sadness so beautiful you think only those can put gold at the tip of your fingers.

Tony had said nothing. His work said it all. 

It says so much more now: half-finished trash, discarded pieces of nothing, shaking hands. Even JARVIS can’t get him to focus. He thought Afghanistan had been rock bottom but he should’ve known he’d never get there when it’s about himself. Yinsen had been fire and rage and retaliation,  _ don’t waste your life _ . 

Steve being gone, it’s digging even deeper than the deepest pit of despair. 

Tony is tired of being the survivor.

People come, people go, JARVIS keeps watch but Tony doesn’t listen to what they have to say. He wants to, he really does, he just can’t. There’s too much inside of him, layers upon layers of dead leaves upon dirt upon soil upon a crust so hard it constricts his chest. There’s no room left for the words of others, let alone for his own.

Tony knows about shutting down. Obsolete hardware. Aching joints. And being the one left alive when he shouldn’t have been. If only he had fought harder. If only Steve had been the one to wake up; as it should have been in a logical world. 

Once, he manages to surface just enough to beg Natasha with his eyes to train together; she says she won’t help him hurt himself. She understands, too, and she has made assessment after assessment of him so she knows. 

He gets so angry he throws a wrench at her, which she sidesteps. She looks at him with eyes that say, “Alright,” and “I’m still here for you whenever you need.” It’s too fucking much; Tony is buried again before he can silently answer.

He stands before the windows and watches the outside world not make a noise. Today, on top of putting a suit on he even ate breakfast. Half of it. A quarter maybe. Or just a tasteless bite. It doesn’t matter. 

He goes down to the workshop. Counts on his fingers all the stages of grief for one inhale, then counts them again to hold his breath, then again to exhale; back to the beginning. His back hits the damp wall, and filling his vision are red spots. They grow bigger and stare at him and eat all of Steve’s face. 

He counts all the stages of grief for one inhale…JARVIS says something Tony’s brain can’t transform into meaning.

He falls into darkness.

At some point, Tony works around his AI’s protectiveness by  _ ordering _ and gets his hand on the files concerning his attacker, and the night of–

He gets obsessed. It’s a character trait, he argues with himself, not a broken coping mechanism. And then he gets an idea. 

Maybe if he can’t mourn it’s because he didn’t lose anything; maybe where the others are looking for Steve’s body he can be looking for Steve. They believed the blood and the scene and they believed Tony’s despair– bless their hearts.

They won’t believe his fevered madness, his textbook denial. It doesn’t matter. There’s no body. Steve isn’t dead. Looking for him might be the only thing left he can’t mess up. 

He doesn’t go through anger; he has been going through it since he woke up. It only had one target– himself, obviously. He’s not shy about that.

It takes almost stepping into bargaining before something happens. Faithless Tony is ready to pray.

But he never had to ask anything for Steve to answer.

He comes back. He’s alive.

“I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” Tony whispers in the crook of Steve’s neck, November rain falling out of his eyes as quietly as it does outside his soundproof windows. 

Steve clings and clings and clings; he didn’t stumble when the others came back with him, even with the broken leg already half healed. He ran. 

“Hello,” Steve says, giving a smile to the skin of Tony’s cheek. 

“Was it–” Tony halts himself before asking the unaskable. 

“It was. I thought you were dead, in that alley, alone. I watched you stop breathing,” Steve, unsteady, grips the back of Tony’s shirt like a child.

“Did I?” 

A pause. “No, it was another of his tricks.” Is Steve only comforting himself with those words, or is it the truth? Tony doesn’t know. 

It doesn’t matter.

“Hello,” he says. He runs his hands up Steve’s back. Gold at his fingertips.

Full to the brink. Starting up again.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Hell's blogging platform](https://kinsbournescream.tumblr.com/tagged/ana-writes-sometimes)


End file.
